The purpose of this experiment is to examine the effect of printed word frequency and word ambiguity on subject¹s performance of two types of cued-recall task. Printed word frequency refers to how commonly a word appears in printed documents such as newspapers and books. An example of a very high frequency word is the word THE, whereas a low frequency word is KUMQUAT. Previous studies on word frequency have found that in cued recall tasks when word frequency was low recall performance was better than when it was high. This effect has never been examined for ambiguous words, and it is unclear if it would be the same for ambiguous, relative to non-ambiguous, words. Ambiguous words are words with more than one meaning. For example, the word RIGHT has multiple meanings; correct, a direction, or a personal moral claim. Previous research has shown that non-ambiguous words were recalled more frequently than ambiguous words (Gee, 1997). The type of task typically used is either intralist or extralist cued recall. In intralist cued recall, the cue and target words are paired together at study. The participant is later given the cue to aid in recalling the target. In extralist cued recall, subjects are presented only the target words at study. At recall meaningfully related cue words are presented to prompt recall of the targets. Both, word frequency and word ambiguity, have been examined separately in previous studies but they have not been combined in a way that would allow us to examine their relationship to each other in cued recall performance.
One explanation of the frequency effect in cued recall is that high frequency, or common, words are experienced more often than low frequency words, and on average they are experienced more recently than low frequency words (Nelson & McEvoy, under review). High frequency words also appear in more contexts than low frequency words. Uncommon words may appear in fewer contexts, which may make it easier for the participant to recall the last specific context of the word, namely the study session of the experiment. This may aid in the recall of low frequency words during the recall portion of the experiment.
It is important to examine the frequency effect for ambiguous words because ambiguous words have different meanings, and the selection of each meaning varies with the context in which the word appears. Context is manipulated in this study by altering the type of task given to the participant. Intralist tasks provide a context to aid in the resolution of the ambiguous word meaning because the cue and target word are presented together during study. The cue word provides a context for the ambiguous target. This gives the participant the opportunity to associate the words and recognize the relationship between the words. In other words, it provides the context appropriate to the testing condition. Thus, in the intralist task the ambiguous words effectively become non-ambiguous whereas in the extralist case there is no context cue provided at study. This implies an interaction between ambiguity and type of task such that non-ambiguous words are recalled better than ambiguous words in the extralist task, but there is no difference in the intralist task. Additionally, since the participants are given the opportunity to study the cue and target words together and thus associate the words and recognize the relationship between the words, it is expected that intralist tasks will result in higher levels of recall than extralist tasks.
The experimental design formed a 2x2x2 mixed model factorial. Type of task was manipulated between subjects. Word ambiguity and word frequency were manipulated within subjects. The subjects were 60 undergraduate students from the State University of New York, College at Fredonia in Introductory Psychology courses.
Subjects are currently being tested individually using a Power Macintosh G3 computer. Each subject is randomly assigned to one of the two between subject¹s conditions and one of the two word lists. Twenty-four target or 24 cue-target pairs are presented individually at a three second rate during the study session. At recall, in both the intralist and extralist conditions, the cue is presented and the task is to recall the associated target word. Accuracy as well as voice reaction times are the dependent variables.
We are predicting a main effect of word frequency such that low frequency words will be recalled more often than high frequency words. This finding would replicate those of previous studies on word frequency (Nelson & McEvoy, under review). We are also predicting a main effect of word ambiguity such that non-ambiguous words will be recalled more frequently than ambiguous words. Again this prediction is based on previous research (Gee, 1997). The third main effect that is predicted based on previous research (Nelson, Schreiber, & McEvoy, 1992) is that of type of task, where intralist tasks will result in more frequent recall than extralist tasks.
Each of these predicted effects are interesting, but the focus of this study is on the potential interaction between frequency and ambiguity. If the interaction is reliable and indicates that the frequency effect is larger for non-ambiguous relative to ambiguous words then this could indicate that current measures of word frequency are inaccurate for ambiguous words and that they are underestimating the actual frequency of each meaning of the word. However, if the frequency effect is larger for ambiguous relative to non-ambiguous words this could indicate that overall word frequency is more important in the processing of ambiguous words than it is in the processing of non-ambiguous words. This finding would have interesting implications for theories of memory and ambiguity resolution. Data collection is nearing completion and we will soon have the answers we seek.
References
Nelson, D.L., Schreiber, T.A., & McEvoy, C.L. (1992). Processing implicit and explicit representations. Psychological Review, 99, 322-348.
Nelson, D. L., & Xu, J. (1995) Effects of implicit memory on explicit recall: Set size and word-frequency effects. Psychological Research, 57, 203-214
Gee, N.R.(1997). Implicit memory and word ambiguity. Journal of Memory and Language, 36, 253-275
Nelson, D.L., & McEvoy, C.L. (1998). What is this thing called frequency?. Under Review. Memory & Cognition.